TIGHTEN UP

TIGHTEN UP

by Vince Aletti

A piano/strings/chorale version of “The Impossible Dream” is overflowing someone else’s apartment and coming into mine, competing with my hissing radiators. Yesterday the woman in back of me at the check-out counter at Finast was singing along with the muzak. Sleazo inputs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Ian Matthews doing “Da Doo Ron Ron” without changing genders from the old Crystals version. I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still. Matthews, with a fine harmonizing male back-up, deep bass and all, sings, Yeah he looks so fine/ Yeah I’m gonna make him mine. Now, I don’t know what sort of intentions Matthews had when he made this cut (for his Tigers Will Survive lp) — whether he was just funnin’ or Striking A Blow, as it were, For Gay Liberation — but in a sense it isn’t important. Obviously he made a decision not to alter the song as it was originally done and even if that decision wasn’t a serious one — in fact the very wnseriousness of the cut (it ends with an outbreak of laughter) is a great part of its excitement — it was important. A man singing a love song about another man: Somebody told me his name was Bill — I was going Jo say, even with lyrics so inconsequential as “Da Doo Ron Ron” but no, especially with silly lyrics cause homosexuality has been thought of as serious business for too long (when it wasn’t being taken to light that is).

Roberta Flack talks about singing at a predominately gay club in Washington before she became famous: “I sang songs for them and their sensitivity about romance, things like ‘Until It’s Time for You to Go’ and ‘The Impossible Dream.’ ” Ugh. I’m not really blaming Roberta for taking gay life so seriously; she was just giving the crowd what it wanted — what it thought it wanted — cause faggots can take themselves very seriously. Tragic love, deep sensitivity, doomed romance and all that. The Boys in the Band, right? I was talking with Stuart Byron at a Village Voice party and some young kid zeroed in on us because he dug that we were — and I hate the word “gay” so at the risk of offending Stuart I’m going to use the word “faggots” and explain it later — faggots and he was making a point of speaking to all the gay people in the place. I should’ve just told him to fuck off — can you imagine going up to two black men and saying, Hi, I’m going around talking to all the black men here and . . . ; but he seemed to be gay himself or anyway was putting on a pretty good front. It didn’t take long to find out that he’d never fucked with a guy and he didn’t seem any too sure whether he wanted to but, he said, he enjoyed being effeminate. If nothing else, his head had been fucked with — but whose hasn’t been messed up one way or another in this society? He thought, I guess, that (1) if you’re gonna be a faggot you’ve gotta be effeminate or (2) if you’re gonna be effeminate you’ve gotta be a faggot. Oh shit. Anyway, anyway, at one point in the conversation, yelling above the din and through the smoke in the room, he said he wanted -to meet gay people because they were so sensitive and intelligent and clever and witty and well you know. I yelled back at him, What bullshit.

What bullshit. It’s the positive part of the stereotype. The part that people can kinda calm themselves with (Well, yes, he probably does such cocks and god knows what else, but he’s so sensitive and witty and etc.) and the part that faggots can feel self-satisfied about (Yes, they probably loathe us, but we are sensitive and witty and etc.). It’s like knee-grows have that rhythm. Just another restriction of the strait-jacket. Or in this case, straight jacket. A flattering stereotype can be just as oppressive; so many faggots think they’ve gotta be on every, minute or they’ll degenerate into — what? just faggots. Not clever, amusing faggots but just — faggots. How awful. But as aware blacks pointed out to the black bourgeoisie, to the man you're still niggers; cultivated niggers but — niggers. So be that. Which may have something to do with why I don’t like the word gay — aside from its being a dumb, weak word and a part of that “positive” stereotype, it seems like a cover-up. Gay has nothing to do with my self-definition (although, as it’s being redefined in action by liberated homosexuals, it becomes more acceptable). As long as we’re taking their words, I prefer faggot cause it has a harder, nastier sound that has nothing to do with the cocktail party and drawing room definition of the “acceptable” homosexual. And although I wouldn’t want anyone calling me a faggot who wasn’t one himself (in the same way that nigger is used among blacks), I would rather be that outlaw/outcast than that witty man at parties. But I guess even that’s romanticizing.

To get back to the music: It’s not that faggots don’t have tragic of maybe just unhappy love affairs (like everybody else) but, contrary to most faggotidentified songs (and books and movies), that is not the limit of our experience. The problem is in the term “faggot-identified,” because although there are certainly many gay songwriters and singers there are no songs about homosexual love (unless maybe you want to include everyone’s favorite example, “Lola”). So the way to get around this — having no songs to sing — I is to identify with women’s songs or change the pronouns in men’s songs or stick to those songs sung to a lover identified only as “you” (which has probably been the safest and most honest way for a gay songwriter to deal with a love song and avoid being pinned down sexually — only the singer knows for sure; an example: Elton John’s “Your Song” which was supposedly written for a guy — “I don’t have much money but, boy if I did/ I’d buy a big house where we both could live” — although that’s easily overlooked). Obviously, none of. these choices is exactly satisfying. And too often the songs that many faggots have chosen to identify with in the past have been disgustingly self-pitying songs that have accepted unquestioningly society’s definition of homosexual love as not only tragic but doomed. The impossible dream for fuck’s sake. Enough. Enough of that shit. I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still. As Tom put it, The songs have to come out of the closet too.

But I suppose, to get first things first, it’s the singers who have to take that step. And not some singer from the closed society of gay bars who makes an album for that same market, complete with a Judy Garland number or two. Fuck that. What I’m looking for is Mick Jagger singing about fucking with a guy (although that would probably take the same heavy macho stance his women songs do) or David Bowie clearing up the ambiguous thicket of his lyrics and dealing with the subject as clearly as he does in interviews or — James Taylor singing one of his tender ballads only about a man so that even boys and girls in Iowa would have to take it into consideration. Imagine that.

Falling in love or maybe just fucking that’s ok too with people of your own sex is an experience that’s less and less limited to people who define themselves as gay (and it’s defining yourself that makes the difference). But there are no songs about it. I never really missed these songs before — maybe I never thought I needed them or deserved them. But it’s part of my life — the lives of a lot of us, you know — that I feel closer to now. And I’d like to sing about it, if only to myself walking to the subway. True, I could always take “My Guy” and sing it for myself but what I’m waiting for is A1 Green, say, singing “My Guy” for all of us. Yeah, that’s what I’m waiting for.

“Some of Betty Crocker’s recipes sure beat this brown rice and curry pork ..."

"Marinated Fruits & Roots"

1 T Gospel

3 T Jazz

2 T Folk, both East & West brands

1 T Country or enough to hold mixture together

1/5 c Latin Seasoning

Pinch ea. Dixieland, orchestra & choir

Combine ingredients and blend well.

Sprinkle with savory and simmer.

Serves multitudes.

“Joy of Cooking?” asked the loquacious FBM sailor, sitting next to me on American Airlines’ 707 Astrojet. “Yeah, my mom gave me that book when I was a freshman at UCSB, that was the year before I get drafted. Some of Betty Crocker’s recipes sure beat this brown rice & curry pork. I’m really sick of...” “No,” I explained, “Joy of Cooking is a band.” “Wha?” I gave him the earphones and he plugged in to hear the end of “Bangla-Desh” by Stu Phillips and the Hollywood Strings. As “Closer to the Ground” began, the captain announced preparation for landing. I read, much to my chagrin, the Fun in Flight Program: “Popular” musical selections — Joy of Cooking along with Peggy Lee, The Lettermen, Glen Campbell and Jackie Gleason. Capitol Record’s “Now Sound” tape featured Grand Funk, The Band, Joyous Noise & Leo Kottke, to name a representative few. The latter pair were accompanied by J of C in The Joy Wagon, a surprise package which recently completed a national college circuit tour. A simulated wood-grain, gold-plated plaque congratulating Terry Garthwaite, Joy’s lead vocal and guitarist, on Capitol’s Joy Wagon trek is proudly displayed on her bathroom door.